Fancy New Wall Street Duane Reade Does Hair and Nails

July 5, 2011

Tomorrow, Duane Reade will open a new location at 40 Wall Street, and to cater to the business types who are expected to shop there, the store will feature a hair salon, a nail bar, a pharmacy with a doctor on-hand, a sushi bar, a juice bar, and a stock ticker. At 22,000 square feet, the store is the largest Duane Reade ever built.

The new services offered by the Wall Street store represent an attempt by Duane Reade to rethink the traditional model of the pharmacy and to customize each location so that it can best serve local populations.

That store was successful in coercing hipsters to overcome the stigma of shopping at a chain store by offering them cheap and rare artisan brews, but we’re skeptical that the rich and powerful of Wall Street will embrace Duane Reade as quickly as a bunch of broke hipsters in Williamsburg just because it has a nail salon or a sushi bar. One man who works at 40 Wall Street told the New York Times, “I don’t know about the sushi. I’d have to smell it first. But I’ll try anything once.”

Joe Magnacca, President of Duane Reade, remains optimistic, though. “We believe it’s the most exciting drugstore in the world,” he said of the new location.